Saw a scary demo of a public wifi hack at a coffee shop in Austin

Last Friday I was killing time at a coffee shop on South Congress and this guy at the next table ran a quick demo. He set up a fake hotspot with the same name as the shop, waited for someone to connect, and showed me their login traffic in plain text. It took him maybe 10 minutes with a cheap laptop. I always thought public wifi was sketchy but seeing it live made it real. Now I only use my phone hotspot for anything with a password. Has anyone else seen one of these demos and changed their daily habits?

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the_hugo10d ago

The part about him showing you their login traffic in plain text is what gets me. Did he actually scroll through their emails or bank sessions, or was it just the Facebook and Gmail cookies that popped up? I feel like knowing how deep that access goes changes the threat level. I switched to my hotspot after a buddy of mine got his Instagram taken over at a hotel lobby in Dallas, but I never saw the actual hack live. How long did you stick around watching before you packed up your stuff?